A Senator Without Constituents

Remember Russ Feingold? Lone vote against PATRIOT Act? The half of McCain-Feingold that didn't totally buckle? The progressive hero who lost his Senate seat during the Tea Party wave? GQ shared a few drinks with Feingold the Citizen and talked about the presidential race, our new Gilded Age, and his completely startling desire to drop big bombs all over the Middle East

When his normally docile listening sessions across the state turned into heated, vitriolic affairs, people calling Obama a socialist, calling him a "Washington insider," tea bags hanging from the brims of their hats, the senator from Wisconsin knew he would probably lose. And then he lost. Afterward, he smoked a cigar.

A year and change later, Russ Feingold sits against the banquette of Elsa's in Milwaukee, plucking bacon wrapped chestnuts from a platter between us, making short work of a Brandy Old Fashioned. "I was relieved that it was over," he says now, thinking back on those days immediately after the election went to the other guy. "And I was interested to see what happened next."

What happened next: Well, first, the Packers won the Super Bowl. And then Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker made a power grab for the collective bargaining rights of public workers, and thousands of angry Wisconsinites stormed the steps of the Capital. Feingold got a job teaching at Marquette Law School, and wrote a book making the case for a more focused counter-terrorism effort overseas (While America Sleeps, out February 21). But the movement kept moving: Last fall, a few angry people pitched tarps in an anonymous park in downtown New York, and hundreds came to join them. Oakland, Seattle, UC Davis. And then in the op-ed pages, on the talk shows, in the president's State of the Union address, and on stage in GOP debates. A referendum on income inequality in political influence, the Feingold special.

So it should come as no surprise that here, in the restaurant, two separate people have come up to him and told him to run—for what, it's not really important. Governor. Senator, again. Hell, President. Problem is Citizen Feingold is starting to enjoy himself. Another brandy old-fashioned!

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**GQ: I've never associated brandy with Wisconsin, to be perfectly honest. **

Russ Feingold: When we grew up they used to tell us that Wisconsin was number one in brandy consumption per capita. I don't know if it's still true but it's not that popular to drink in other states. I mean, you go to the supper clubs all over the state and people are drinking brandy, and particularly these brandy old fashioneds. We're a brandy state, amongst other things. Beer, bratwurst, cheese...

**GQ: ...football, politics. Specifically your brand of politics, Russ. You spent your entire career here waging war on income inequality and the preferential treatment of deep-pocketed corporations in American politics. And then just a year after you lose, that turns into the major, hot-button issue across America. You're kind of the patron saint of Occupy Wall Street. **

Russ Feingold: Never did I think, standing in the shadows of the cathedral here that I would be called a patron saint, but I'll take it. I mean, take me out of it, but they have acknowledged the role of corporate money, of Wall Street, and of Citizens United. I endorsed that movement immediately.

**GQ: It took us long enough. Three years since the subprime mortgage bubble and TARP, eighteen months since the Citizens United ruling. **

Russ Feingold: I voted against all that stuff. I kept thinking, how long are we going to buy the baloney of these corporate interest groups? I'm thrilled to see people standing up.

**GQ: Do you think you lost specifically because of Citizens United? Your opponent, Ron Johnson, had a lot of his own money, and a lot of money behind him. **

Russ Feingold: Oh, not even close. What happened was Barack Obama got elected with the economy in a horrible mess, Democrats had the governorship in Wisconsin, both Houses of the legislature in Congress, the presidency. And people basically said, "you're a good guy, but we're voting against all incumbents." It was as simple as that. We had plenty of money, I can't complain about that. People made up their minds. I knew the minute I voted for the health care bill that that was it.

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**GQ: Seriously? It was that bill that did you in? **

Russ Feingold: I couldn't say for sure, but yeah. My sense was that if things were normal I was probably going to lose and I accepted that. I did everything I could, but when the economy is that bad, and when things are rough, it's just normal I guess. I don't consider it odd that people said, "let's just try something different."

**GQ: A lot of that had to do with our country's brief flirtation with the Tea Party. **

Russ Feingold: First of all, where did it come from? A week after Obama is sworn in I've got people coming to town meetings with, like, little tea bags and I'm saying, "Well, what's your complaint? That he didn't wear the right suit at the inaugural? What is the deal? He hasn't done anything." Most of my town hall meetings had always been love fests, and some of my guys used to complain: "I'd like for somebody to yell at you a bit." Sure enough, all of a sudden that's all it was. And my supporters that were in the room were becoming scared. First, they become intimidated to the point where they don't speak. Then they don't show up. So I'm possibly one of the only Americans who was in the room, maybe 150 times, with these Tea Party people, who was not a part of them. I was there. This was clearly a corporate-generated myth and these Tea Party people, many of whom were completely genuine, were taken for a ride. They were completely co-opted by the Republican party, totally bamboozled. Occupy Wall Street is a real movement. The Tea Party ended up being a shill for corporate America.

**GQ: You talk about it calmly in retrospect, but surely you must have been infuriated when you realized this "shill" would cost you your job. **

Russ Feingold: I hate to tell you this, but I was intrigued. Instead of being angry I was like, What is this? Why would people react this way, to this new president? Why would people choose this as a way to react to economic difficulty? I wanted to understand. So, no, I was not infuriated.

**GQ: You never, like, threw a glass at a wall? **

Russ Feingold: Not at all. Not once. I have a sense of the absurd. And when something is so ridiculous, I'm just like, "Oh my God." It was actually making me excited.

**GQ: You were in Washington for 18 years. Congress went through several distinct shifts during that time, through Clinton and then toward the end of Bush's second term. **

Russ Feingold: When I was under George Mitchell [the Democratic Senate Majority Leader from '89 - '95] and under Bob Dole, the Republican, they'd bring up bills and say, "OK, who has an amendment?" And then you do the bill, you have a debate on the amendment and you have a vote. It was a legitimate process. The majority usually won, but it was a real process. I remember going to Bob Dole, in the Republican Caucus and saying, "Hey Bob, I have two amendments," and he'd say, "No problem," and you never had to say anything more. You didn't have to write him a letter; you didn't have to confirm it. I gotta tell you, with both Democrat and Republican leaders, after that it didn't mean anything unless you had a blood oath. So this sort of integrity of process, the respect for it was destroyed.

**GQ: The fact that there is even a bill called McCain-Feingold is an excellent crystallization of that period, when people reached across the aisle. Could something of that nature ever happen again? Like, Boehner-Pelosi? **

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Russ Feingold: I hope so. Yeah, I'm sure it will. I'm sure this will work its way out. But it's a terrible time in terms of people getting the government they deserve.

**GQ: Do you still talk to McCain? **

Russ Feingold: I talked to him the other day. John and I like each other. We're close. We're not like social friends, but we're still very close. When we were traveling in Iraq, we would start stumbling out of our rooms in the morning and he'd say, "march or die," "march or die," and then they'd issue us our flack jackets and our helmets and it was like being with a commandant. And I was like this soldier that wasn't in very good shape. John treated me well as a person, always.

**GQ: Do you think he changed during the 2008 election? **

Russ Feingold: I think his analysis would have been, "Look, if I become president, then I'm going to be able to really do things in an independent way," and he saw himself as a Teddy Roosevelt, and in many ways he was, and has been, in terms of his rough-rider, Progressive Republican thing. But John made quite an effort to get the conservative vote and it caused him to get away from some of his better instincts, like his instincts on not having tax cuts to the very wealthy, and global warming. And I was sorry to see that. I believe that if he had become president he would have been a courageous president. But there were moments where I felt bad because I think his people were telling him, "Look, you gotta do this if you want to be the nominee."

**GQ: Do you think that Obama has been the president he promised to be? **

Russ Feingold: The expectations for him were absurd. And they were wrong. They expected him to be something he couldn't possibly be given his level of experience. It was impossible to ask him to be all the things that people poured into him.

**GQ: He said he would try to reach across the aisle. "To those whose support I have yet to earn, I will be your president, too" and all that jazz. **

Russ Feingold: Yes, he was not being cynical about that. He wanted to do that even more than maybe I would have wanted him to, but the truth is he tried.

**GQ: And then he was essentially crucified for it. Too quick to make concessions, too weak—pick your insult. **

Russ Feingold: Which is ridiculous. Look, I don't want to use the word 'patriotism' too much, but the right likes to use it all the time. It is not patriotic to decide to destroy a new president who was duly elected by an overwhelming margin. It is un-patriotic to resolve to destroy that presidency. If you care about this country, you help him. Before Obama, we had an opportunity after 9/11 to make a transition as a people to come together and try to figure this thing out and become a part of the world in a way that we never had. But for cynical reasons, both domestically and internationally, the situation was exploited by the Bush administration and others for political gain. And it's left us weaker. So I see these as a couple of chapters in modern history where America has been grossly disserved by people who wanted immediate political gain to the detriment of the country and it endangers our lives and it endangers our economy and if we're going to have this type of system, we're not just going to get downgraded by Moody, and Standard Poors. We're going to be a dysfunctional country because some people care more about their immediate political and economic interests than they do about the betterment of our whole nation. The American people deserve better. And then you have the interests like the Koch brothers who see this as a golden opportunity to destroy not only this presidency but to destroy unions and to destroy the institutions that have created some balance between the haves and the have-nots in our country. They want to destroy any balance, to go back to the Gilded Age, or something worse.

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**GQ: Do you think it's that malicious? **

Russ Feingold: Yes. Yes. There is something wrong. I don't like to say this but it is malicious, it is intentional, and it is unprecedented.

**GQ: I'm sure we could kill a few hours talking shit about the Koch brothers, but let's talk about your book for a second. I don't want to offend you, but kind of come off as a hawk. **

Russ Feingold: Yeah, if believing that the people who took down the Twin Towers should be brought to justice is being a hawk, you can call me one. I believe that war should always be the last resort, but I am not a pacifist and I believe there are occasions where you need to use military force. I think our approach to Afghanistan was the right approach, bringing the international community. I happen to think going after Qaddafi as an international community was a positive thing. And I was very pleased when this guy in Iraq that was slicing people's heads off was visiting the home of his spiritual advisor, and we figured it out, and we dropped a 500-pound bomb over his head. I was pleased, because I have family and I have children, and I have a grandson and if somebody wants to kill them I'm interested in taking them out. I have no apology for that. Never have. But in most cases that's not the answer.

**GQ: I don't want to criticize your timing, but we've been on a domestic issue kick recently. No one's really talking about the War on Terror these days. **

Russ Feingold: We are vulnerable. There is a problem not only in the Muslim world but in other parts of the world and we can not as a society, as a nation, survive without being active in the rest of the world. We're not doing that as Americans. We have gone back into our shell. That's not the deal. We have to change. We will never be able to be an island nation again.

**GQ: Has Obama done a good job at this, in your opinion? **

Russ Feingold: Obama has a very sophisticated sense of the world. We're lucky to have a president who understands these things, and so I'm hopeful for his second term that he will continue to move in what I consider to be the general right direction—of identifying the right threats, of trying to improve our image to the world. I think his foreign policy record overall has been very good. And I think that drives the Republicans nuts.

**GQ: Let's talk about those Republicans. Are any of the current candidates serious contenders for the job? **

Russ Feingold: Not really. These people on the Republican side are just looking for the hot button thing: "Can we make Obama look weak on Iran? Can we try to suggest that he doesn't really care about Israel?" It's all politics. It's not a genuine desire to get it right. And I will contrast this with Richard Nixon, who I disagreed with in terms of his obsession with Communist issues and so on, but he was a serious man, who understood foreign policy. So when he debated John Kennedy and when he was president, his foreign policy was a genuine attempt to try and solve this and his normalization of relations with China was one of the greatest accomplishments of our time. Not a single GOP candidate today has a serious understanding—or in the case of Newt Gingrich they have an intentionally false understanding—of the situation.

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**GQ: Newt's a class-act. **

Russ Feingold: Oh yeah. He's a winner. He was down the hall from me for many years in Washington and he's not my kind of guy. I don't think I'm his kind of guy. He sure seems to be willing to say just about anything for effect. And, you know what, that's not what we need.

**GQ: What about Romney? **

Russ Feingold: I have no use for his approach. He doesn't ever commit, he doesn't stick to his principles. He's been all over the map on gay issues, on abortion, on everything else, on individual mandates. He's not a man that's willing to stand by his principles and his convictions. He appears to be unprincipled.

**GQ: Well, he's not running on principles, he's running on being a consultant who can come in and fix America. **

Russ Feingold: That would be a lovely thing if he were able to do that but he can't. It's not that simple. You know, it's not...let's bring in this guy who is going to solve this in a few minutes. That's not the reality of American politics.

**GQ: What happened with Huntsman? He seemed like the sanest one up there. **

Russ Feingold: Here is a guy that is fluent in Mandarin. I talked to him on a trip to Iraq. He's already been the ambassador to Singapore, and now he's been the ambassador to China. It's sad to see a guy like that having to say some of the things he's had to say to try and get attention because I know its beneath his dignity. Because he's very dignified, very bright, very talented.... enormously bright. He's one of the more talented people around and I hate seeing someone like that having to play this sort of demeaning game.

**GQ: Why do they do that? **

Russ Feingold: Because he wanted to be president.

**GQ: Why don't you do that? **

Russ Feingold: Because I don't want to be president. And the reason I didn't want to be president was because I don't want to do that. See, I'm not willing, for power, to give up who I am. Or to not be who I am. And so, if it can't be done by being who I am, then that's fine. I have a great life. When I was sort of being asked to run in 2008, I was [polling] at 12 percent in Seattle, 6 percent in Georgia, 7 percent in New Jersey. In Iowa we were very high numbers. But my kids didn't want me to do it. Now, fortunately, I didn't want to do it either.

**GQ: Do you think you ever will? **

Russ Feingold: Probably not.

**GQ: What about senator? Or governor? **

Russ Feingold: I don't know. I wont run for office again until I feel like it. And right now I don't feel like it. I've always been grateful for the enormous outpouring of support and affection that I've received here in the state, but I've never kidded myself that anybody is irreplaceable.

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